 In the face of news that seems unrelentingly dire, progress was reported in the fight against the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as British Petroleum (BP) crews places a 4-story, 100-ton containment dome to capture the leaking oil and pump it to the surface. (Check CBS News) The Los Angeles Times reports that the container could be operating by Sunday. On May 7th the dome was being placed on the oil pipe break to curb the amount of oil escaping into the open sea.
The technology has been used a few times in shallow waters, but never at such extreme depths — 5,000 feet down, where the water pressure is enough to crush a submarine. The dome is one of three that will be lowered 5000 feet to the seabed to seal off one of the two remaining leaks. 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking from the Deepwater Horizon rig each day, or more than 200,000 gallons.
The New York Times has an illustration of how the dome will work and reports that BP hope to have the dome operating by Monday, capturing about 85 percent of the oil spilling into the sea.
The company’s crews are working in tandem with the Coast Guard on a variety of methods to battle the oil, both on and below the surface of the water. BP is planning to drill a relief well in 5000 feet of water to intercept the existing well around 13,000 feet below the seabed and permanently seal it. The new drill site is about half a mile on the seabed from the leaking well, and drilling is estimated to take some three months.
There has been some slight progress as British Petroleum crews try to stem the flood of oil coming from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. According to the New York Times, weather has played a role as calmer winds have allowed crews to increase their efforts to stop the oil slicks now threatening the coastlines of four southeastern states.
The New Orleans Times Picayune has a map detailing possible areas of the spill’s landfall.The paper also features daily updates and resources here. Click here for an interactive map from the New York Times.
BP also provides daily updated response maps on their website as does Transocean.
The spill began on April 20th when an explosion caused by a blowout - a failure in pressure control systems. That resulted in a deadly fire, killing eleven of the rig’s 126-member crew and destroying the rig. There are three companies involved which may bear some liability for the accident. Transocean is the rig’s owner and operator, and is identified on its website as the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor. Click here for Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon Response Site and the companion Facebook page.
The rig was leased to British Petroleum and the drilling equipment provided by Halliburton and was also responsible for the cementing – a method of sealing a newly-drilled well to control pressure from the oil and gas below it.
BP’s efforts to cope with the oil spill have encountered criticism and problems on several fronts. Attempts to install a shutoff valve at the site of one of the leaks were thwarted by high winds and choppy seas, which also damaged miles of floating booms laid out in coastal waters to protect sections of vulnerable shoreline from Louisiana to northwestern Florida. BP faces potentially millions of dollars in costs relate to the spill, dwarfing Exxon Mobil’s tab from the Valdez spill.
The spill comes five years after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans and many accused the federal government of doing too little, too late. Having learned from that debacle, President Obama visited Louisiana soon after the explosion and promised to devote all necessary resources to battle the spill’s impact on sensitive offshore wildlife refuges as well as the region’s sensitive fishing grounds.
A consortium of environmental groups and other organizations has appealed to the Interior Department asking for reconsideration of the preliminary approval of expanded offshore oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. It may also affect President Obama’s commitment to expand drilling off the Atlantic coast, an effort he supports in order to reduce dependence on imported oil. In his plan announced last month, the first offshore leases would be issued off the Virginia coast in 2012 at the earliest.
California Offshore Drilling
On the nation’s other coast, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger withdrew his support to expand offshore drilling along the Santa Barbara coast, citing concerns stemming from the BP spill. The Governor had previously announced his support for drilling, arguing that its’ projected $100 million in new revenue each year would help balance California’s nearly $20 billion budget deficit. Read more here from the Sacramento Bee.
In reality California suffered only one serious spill of oil. In 1969 a Union Oil rig had a blowout six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara and over 3 million barrels of crude oil spilled into the bay and polluted the coastline, killing more than 10,000 birds and becoming a “no drilling” rallying cry for environmentalists in the state.
The central reason for the spill was the US Geological Survey's opposition to the Union Oil engineers who wanted to drill deeper to insure no oil would escape. The reality is that undersea oil drilling in the Santa Barbara Channel actually reduces the amount of natural leaking oil and tar onto the beaches and the environment. Drilling reduces the underground pressure that forces the oil/tar out of the ocean floor and into the environment. You can read more by clicking here for an overview by the Santa Barbara County Planning and Development Energy Division.
Blow Out Protectors
Offshore oil drilling has produced little environmental pollution in relationship to the amount of oil actually produced. The rigs employ complex blow out protectors that use a variety of devices to stop the release of oil and even seal wells on demand. The Santa Barbara Channel, like other sites, are protected by these devices. Unfortunately the rather shallow drilling permitted by the Federal Government in the Union Oil case resulted in the oil actually being released around the pipe entering the ocean floor. In the case of the current problem, the break occurred up the line and for some reason the blow out protectors have not been functioning.
Comparisons
The Gulf spill also raises comparisons with the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 in which the ship struck a reef and ultimately released 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska. Click here for the EPA’s Emergency Management overview on what had been the country’s worst oil spill.
As the government and the public balance competing priorities in the weeks and months ahead, there is a need to thoughtfully assess new challenges and threats with decisions based upon fact, not emotion. In a democratic society, public understanding of risk issues will impact how elected officials deal with the challenges facing the country.
For additional AnalysisOnline resources on understanding risk, click here.
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